Gaining Readership, Credibility

Over at the IAOC blog Steve King asked if blogs will achieve high levels of consumer trust, among other questions.  I started a comment, which become too long (the template for the IAOC blog makes long post/comments difficult to read) so I am posting here and trackbacking.

I think the answer to your question is yes, some blogs will achieve high levels of trust because they provide excellent content or consistently good recommendations of content elsewhere.  Corporate comms people will have to treat them as they do traditional journalists and other influencers/gatekeepers.

However, there is something else related to this topic that I find intriguing.  I can't point to the source right now, but I remember reading somewhere that people don't go read about a topic or a post unless they see it referenced at least three times.  Anecdotally, this tends to be true for me as well.   So, let's break it down.

In scanning my RSS feed headlines/abstracts I note that someone has linked/commented to an article I might not have gotten to yet (or maybe I saw it in passing, but didn't bother to actually read it).  I continue scanning, but notice other links/comments.  At that point, especially if the people linking/commenting are people whose opinion I trust, I will likely go read the original article.

So, it isn't just the content that you post that is important to getting people to read.  It is the fact that other people, who the original author might not know at all, but who I know and trust, point back to it.  So, any blogger who wants to gain readership (and influence) should spend a good amount of time building and nurturing a network of people who connect back to his or her blog.

Corp comms people need to be aware of this process and work it from all angles, i.e., participate in comments/trackbacks in the blogs covering their particular industry (and pitch the authors on stories when it makes sense) and work to identify the network ecosystem of their "target" blogs so they can reach out to members of that network and join in the conversations there as well.  At the same time they need to be aware of and growing their corporations own network ecosystem, as well as their personal one. 

Comments

[Steve]

Jennifer:

We've been doing research on the crediblity of blogs and online users seem to consider blogs they perceive as having lots of in-bound links as much more credible than blogs that do not have a lot of links. They also think blogs that have a lot of traffic (again by their perception) are more credible.

Our work leads me to think the advice in your post is spot on.

Steve

[Ike]

Steve asked a question about which was the better strategy: monitoring the 3rd parties, or running an outward-facing blog?

Why the either-or?

Silently monitoring and not contributing in certain areas allows you to see what's being said and written in an unfiltered environment. Done correctly, this monitoring will bring in almost real-time information about how your reputation, your customer service, and your messaging.

While you won't get that level of honesty on your own corporate-out blog, you will get a chance at developing feedback, and going a level or two deeper into the trends and issues that arise.

There's a good chance you'll encounter a lot of the same people in both -- but you need to keep the efforts separated: It's not often you get to use the same subjects as both the experiment and the control.

[Chuck McKay]

If you do find the reference to three exposures before reading a blog, will you please post it? Thanks.